Slow Burn

In this episode we’re opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did “ass,” a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an “intensifier” for just about everything? How do pharmaceuticals get their wacky names? And why do we all seem to think that aliens from outer space would travel to Earth just to kidnap our cows? In this episode, you’ll hear from linguistics professor Nicole Holliday [https://nicolerholliday.wordpress.com/], historians Greg Eghigian [https://history.la.psu.edu/directory/greg-eghigian/] and Mike Goleman, and professional “namer” Laurel Sutton [https://catchwordbranding.com/team/laurel-sutton/]. This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Katie Shepherd. Our supervising producer is Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Sources for This Episode Bengston, Jonas. “Post-Intensifying: The Case of the Ass-Intensifier and Its Similar but Dissimilar Danish Counterpart [https://tidsskrift.dk/lev/article/download/125257/172074/263732],” Leviathan, 2021. Collier, Roger. “The art and science of naming drugs [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4188646/],” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Oct. 2014. Eghigian, Greg. After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-the-flying-saucers-came-9780190869878], Oxford University Press, 2024. Goleman, Michael J. “Wave of Mutilation: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the 1970s [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3098/ah.2011.85.3.398],” Agricultural History, 2011. Karet, Gail B. “How Do Drugs Get Named? [https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-do-drugs-get-named/2019-08]” AMA Journal of Ethics, Aug. 2019. Miller, Wilson J. “Grammaticalizaton in English: A Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis of the "ass" Intensifier [https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/dr26xz79k],” Master’s Thesis, San Francisco State University, 2017. Monroe, Rachel. “The Enduring Panic About Cow Mutilations [https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-enduring-panic-about-cow-mutilations],” The New Yorker, May 8, 2023. A Strange Harvest [https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Harvest-Linda-Moulton-Howe/dp/B09Q3NDMQ1], dir. Linda Moulton Howe, KMGH-TV, 1980. “United States Adopted Names naming guidelines [https://www.ama-assn.org/about/united-states-adopted-names-usan/united-states-adopted-names-naming-guidelines],” AMA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

White noise has a very precise technical definition, but people use the term loosely, to describe all sorts of washes of sound—synthetic hums, or natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves—that can be used to mask other sounds. Twenty years ago, if you’d told someone white noise was a regular part of your life, they would have found that unusual. Nowadays, it’s likely they use it themselves or know someone who does. The global white noise business is valued at $1.3 billion; TikTok is full of people trumpeting its powers; and Spotify users alone listen to three million hours of it daily. Far more of these sounds already exist than any one person could need—or use. And yet, more keep coming.  Looking out at this uncanny ocean of seemingly indistinguishable noises, we wanted to see if it was possible to put a human face on it; to understand why there is so much of it, and what motivates the people trying to soothe our desperate ears with sounds you're not really supposed to hear. In this episode, you’ll hear from Elan Ullendorff, [https://elan.place/] who writes the illuminating Substack Escape the Algorithm [https://escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/artisinal-white-noise]; Stéphane Pigeon [https://stephanepigeon.com/welcome.php], founder of myNoise [http://mynoise.net]; Brandon Reed, who runs Dwellspring [http://dwellspring.io]; and Mack Haygood [https://mactrasound.com/], author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control [https://www.dukeupress.edu/hush] and host of the podcast Phantom Power [https://phantompod.org/]. We’d also like to thank Dan Berlau, Sarah Anderson, and Ashley Carman.  This episode was written by Katie Shepherd, Evan Chung, and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. We produce Decoder Ring with Max Freedman, and Evan is also our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Sources for This Episode Anderson, Sarah. The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet [https://www.shambhala.com/lost-art-of-silence.html], Shambhala Publications, 2023. Blum, Dani. “Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain? [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/23/well/mind/brown-noise.html]” New York Times, Sep. 23, 2022. Carman, Ashley. “Spotify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable, [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/white-noise-podcasters-are-costing-spotify-38-million-a-year]” Bloomberg, Aug. 17, 2023.  Carman, Ashley. “Spotify to Cut Back Promotional Spending on White Noise Podcasts [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-01/spotify-to-limit-white-noise-podcasters-money-making-options?embedded-checkout=true],” Bloomberg, Sep. 1, 2023. Hagood, Mack. Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control [https://www.dukeupress.edu/hush], Duke University Press, 2019. Pickens, Thomas A., Sara P. Khan, and Daniel J. Berlau. “White noise as a possible therapeutic option for children with ADHD [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965229918309683],” Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Feb. 2019. Riva, Michele Augusto, Vincenzo Cimino, and Stefano Sanchirico. “Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th century white noise machine [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(17)30297-1/abstract],” The Lancet Neurology, Oct. 2017. Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “Boston movie.” Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hollywood has churned out a whole cycle of films drenched in Beantown’s particularities, crimes, crops, class conflicts, and accents, from The Departed to The Town. Why does a city smaller than El Paso or Jacksonville loom so large in the cinematic imagination? Why does Boston have a movie subgenre all its own? What makes a Boston movie a Boston movie? With the help of three guests—film critic Ty Burr [https://www.tyburrswatchlist.com/]; Lisa Simmons, founder of the Roxbury International Film Festival [https://www.roxfilmfest.com/]; and Boston University linguist Danny Erker [https://www.bu.edu/linguistics/profile/daniel-erker/]—we look closely at the history and heyday of the Boston movie: how The Friends of Eddie Coyle set the template, Good Will Hunting shoved the door wide open, and Mystic River ushered in an imperial phase. We discuss the importance of race and class to the Boston movie and the city itself, the role of homegrown movie stars like Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg, and, of course, the best and worst of Boston accents on film. This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Films referenced in this episode: * The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) * Love Story (1970) * The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) * The Brink’s Job (1978) * The Verdict (1982) * Quiz Show (1994) * Good Will Hunting (1997) * Squeeze (1997) * Monument Ave. (1998) * The Boondock Saints (1999) * Southie (1999) * Lift (2001) * Blue Hill Avenue (2001) * Mystic River (2003) * Fever Pitch (2005) * The Departed (2006) * Gone Baby Gone (2007) * The Fighter (2010) * The Town (2010) * Ted (2012) * Ted 2 (2015) * Black Mass (2015) * Spotlight (2015) Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Decoder Ring is marking its 100th episode this year. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our very first episode from 2018, which asks: What happened to the laugh track? For nearly five decades, the laugh track was ubiquitous, but beginning in the early 2000s, it fell out of sitcom fashion. What happened? How did we get from The Beverly Hillbillies to 30 Rock? In this episode we meet the man who created the laugh track, which originated as a homemade piece of technology, and trace that technology’s fall and the rise of a more modern idea about humor. With the help of historians, laugh track obsessives, the showrunners of One Day at a Time and the director of Sports Night, this episode asks if the laugh track was about something bigger than laughter. You can read more in Willa’s article “The Man Who Perfected the Laugh Track [https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/charlie-douglass-and-his-laff-box-invented-the-laugh-track-as-we-know-it.html]” in Slate. Links and further reading on some of the things we discussed on the show: * Interview with Ben Glenn II [https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/conversation-5-ben-glenn-ii-television-historian-and-expert-on-canned-laughter]on the history of the laugh track in McSweeney’s * See a Charlie Douglas Laff Box [http://www.pbs.org/video/antiques-roadshow-appraisal-1953-charlie-douglass-laff-box/] on Antiques Roadshow * More of Paul Iverson’s work [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PX5uYBuDiG7VEwvT6NbIg] restoring laugh tracks and inserting them into new shows * The sitcom One Day at a Time [https://www.netflix.com/title/80095532] * Friends without a Laugh Track [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BFSZ8XzWOM] by Sboss * “The Okeh Laughing Record” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BavE2cFUT54] * Tommy Schlamme and Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night [https://www.amazon.com/Pilot/dp/B008F9SRTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524842783&sr=8-1&keywords=sports+night+season+1] This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and our supervising producer Evan Chung. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on the Decoder RIng hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.  Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Something seems to have happened to car headlights. In the last few years, many people have become convinced that they are much brighter than they used to be—and it’s driving them to the point of rage. Headlight glare is now Americans’ number one complaint on the road. The story of how and why we got here is illuminating and confounding. It’s what happens when an incredible technological breakthrough meets market forces, regulatory failure, and human foibles. So if you feel like everyone’s driving around with their high beams on all the time, it’s not your imagination. What once seemed like an obscure technical concern has gone mainstream. But can the movement to reduce glare actually do something about the problem? In this episode, you’ll hear from Nate Rogers [https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents], who wrote about the “headlight brightness wars” for The Ringer; Daniel Stern [https://www.drivingvisionnews.com/daniel-stern/], automotive lighting expert and editor of Driving Vision News; and Paul Gatto, moderator of r/fuckyourheadlights [https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/]. This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin and Olivia Briley, and produced by Olivia Briley and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is our Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]